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Monday, October 22, 2012

Your spit contains a painkiller that can be 6 times more powerful than morphine.

. .

Human saliva contains a natural painkiller called opiorphin. Due to its
powerful painkilling ability, scientists are trying to synthesize a new
natural painkiller from opiorphin. It is great, because it doesn’t have
the same addicting attributes that morphine does and would work better
with the body.

In a study

, 1
milligram of opiorphin gave the same results as 3 milligrams of morphine
did. In another study, involving rats standing on pins, they needed 6
times more morphine than opiorphin to make them oblivious to the pain.

Opiorphin works in the nerve cells of the spine. It stops the usual
destruction of natural pain killing opiates in the spine called
enkephalins. It is such a simple molecule, that scientists believe it’ll
be possible to synthesize it and produce large quantities of it without
needing to isolate it from saliva. Another approach is to find a drug
that will make the body produce more opiorphin to manage pain.